False Mercury was recorded in May 2016 in Nijmegen, while Takuji Naka and Tim Olive were on tour in Europe. The day after a duo performance at Extrapool, they met with Frans de Waard in a studio in the basement of the venue for several hours of subsurface recording, using modified cassette players, contact microphones, magnetic pickups, hand-made string and wind instruments, spring reverbs, and lo-tech electronics, while in the city above, unheard but perhaps sensed, a stage of the Giro d’Italia (in the Netherlands…) wound its way through the streets and a Queen cover band celebrated in the square. All of this was taken back to Japan, mixed, minimally edited, and is now available on 845 Audio, in a hand-stamped recycled chipboard sleeve. Multiple hours of recording have been lovingly distilled into a single 31-minute dose of subterranean cough syrup-vibe goodness.

The title “Airs” refers to the meaning of the word as a tune or a song, more broadly interpreted as a composition. The four pieces here are all “compositions” in the sense that they all use pre-chosen general guidelines related to form, time, sound sources and density. The plural form is used because there is more than one “song”. The pieces were recorded live in a studio in Tokyo, mainly with microphones (relatively little direct signal), so there is also the element of “air”, the sound and atmosphere of the room. And of course all the attractive idioms such as “putting on airs” and “hot air”… Recorded and mastered by Makoto Oshiro, design by Takahiro Kawaguchi.

Release: July 2014″Dominion Mills” features Anne-F Jacques (rotating devices) and Tim Olive (magnetic pickups). Three tracks, thirty minutes. To burst obfuscatory bubbles, “rotating devices” refers to small electric motors which are modified, manipulated and amplified. The “magnetic pickups” are the engine of a devolved one-string electric guitar. These two simple sound sources, recorded in real time, create a music of departure and return within a shifting, evolving semi-stasis, a rough-hewn sphericality of shifting levels, layers and textures, without the use of looping devices or overdubbing. Recorded in Anne-F’s Montreal studio in July of 2013, this was the duo’s first encounter, which will be followed by a November 2014 tour of Japan.

Two Sunrise

Recorded in the autumn of 2012 in Japan, “Two Sunrise” is a document of the first meetings of Jason Kahn and Tim Olive. Tracks One to Three were recorded in a studio session in Kyoto on September 27; Track Four was recorded at a live performance in Osaka on October 6. These four untitled pieces are eventful and intricately structured with a distinct developmental momentum. Chosen from several hours of recordings, minimally edited and sequenced for maximum impact, “Two Sunrise” highlights both the melding and divergence of Kahn’s analog electronics and Olive’s one-string magnetic pickup device, shaping an active, thoughtful and somehow organic real-time electronic music. Mixed and mastered by Jason Kahn.

The first release from the duo of Katsura Mouri and Tim Olive, “Various Histories”, was recorded near Kyoto on a sweltering summer day in 2010, in non-air-conditioned discomfort. The density of the air and the heavy fug of heat is fully present in these five untitled tracks, with distant thunder tumbling down the mountainsides and sudden nearby rumblings charged by brutal flashes of electricity, gritty heat-static and the relentless life-song of subtropical summer. Or perhaps it’s all coincidence…
Mouri’s low-tech turntables and prehistoric analog delay unit along with Olive’s magnetic pickups and variously-activated metal, wood and plastic objects merge and meld, diverge and re-combine across thirty-four abrasive, foreboding and somehow beautiful minutes. Although “Various Histories” is essentially a real-time document of the multi-leveled density of this long-running duo, Mouri, founding member of the turntable group Busratch, also contributes a number of edits to several of the pieces.

33 bays was recorded in October 2009 in Kyoto, during a Japan tour by the duo of Tim Olive and Alfredo Costa Monteiro. Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs, the two untitled tracks were chosen from a number of pieces captured over several days, showcasing the duo’s attunement and dramatic sense of structure. Olive (one-string electric guitar) and Costa Monteiro (electro-acoustic devices) produce a rough, feral music with moments of surprising calm and beauty, using basic technology to blast into other realms, dark atmospheres of varying density and great textural variety. Sharp transitions and gradual transformations carry the listener from seeming chaos to ordered spaces pierced by shafts of light. Two tracks, total time 43:42.